


Freedom

by LJC



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Defenders coda, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-15 20:53:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13039188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LJC/pseuds/LJC
Summary: Set post-Defenders. She had thought the air would taste different.





	Freedom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hariboo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hariboo/gifts).



She stood in the shadow of a grey stone six storey pre-war building, hidden from sight. Her hands were shoved deep in the pockets of her stolen black coat, the wool concealing the bloodstains. She could just barely see her exhaled breath; the bite of winter hung in the air like a threat and promise combined.

She had thought the air would taste different.

* * *

She doubted that when Nixon began construction on Water Tunnel 3, decades before she was born, anyone—even the ancient orders of the Hand or the Chaste—expected the city's infrastructure would prove to be vital to the survival of The Black Sky. Or, for that matter, the Devil of Hell's Kitchen.

While crews had worked non-stop for days, tunnelling down through the debris of Midland Circle in search of survivors, she had emerged from a supply shaft onto 11th Avenue in the dead of night.

Nearly unrecognisable beneath the grime of ash and blood, carrying her precious burden as if he weighed nothing at all, she had not looked back once.

She couldn't actually hear the sound of glass shattering, as her fist went through the heavy glass of the expensively restored vintage brownstone's front door. Her eardrums may have burst during the implosion. She didn't particularly care—they were already healing. Ever since Alexandra had brought her back, every broken bone, every sword-slash, every burn healed in hours. Alexandra had promised that at the height of her power, damage to the vessel that contained the Black Sky would heal in mere minutes.

(Alexandra had not healed, when the sai had pierced her heart and sliced through her lung like tissue paper. She might have, if not for the decapitation. Even Madame Gao had been shocked, and Gao so rarely broke character.)

Stepping sideways through the door, she felt glass crunch beneath her booted feet. The air in the house tasted stale, and there was a thin coating of dust on the counters. No-one was home, or had been for some time. She hadn't known that or cared, when she'd chosen that particular building. Only that its windows were dark, and it was—for the moment—a safe haven.

All that mattered to her was that she could still feel Matthew's heartbeat against her breast. She masked her own heartbeat just so she could feel it vibrating through her as if it were her own heart.

She climbed the stairs to the master bedroom on silent feet, all her attention narrowed to the warmth of his cheek where it rested against her neck. She laid him gently down onto the king-sized bed. He seemed so small and broken. She hated how broken he seemed.

(How she had broken him.)

His rasping breaths were sweeter than any concerto she had ever heard. His skin, cool but not yet cold beneath her palms as she stripped off his armour piece by piece, felt softer to her than the finest silk.

She picked up a large shallow bowl filled with hideous and ridiculous decorative woven balls, and dumped them out. Filling the bowl with scalding hot water from the shiny taps of the sunken marble bath nearly large enough to qualify as an indoor pool, she wet the first of a stack of pure white Egyptian cotton towels and cleaned the dirt, ash, and tacky blood from his skin carefully, uncovering mottled bruises and scrapes and gashes that bled sluggishly with every beat of his heart. She had to empty and refill the bowl over and over again, before the water stayed clear when she wrung out the now dingy towels.

She worried he was bleeding internally, but she had no way to tell. Her own bones had broken, shattered from the crushing weight of Midland Circle collapsing in on itself, the debris falling straight down into the tunnel where they'd fought. But she had shielded him as best she could, in those final seconds of awareness. When the darkness receded, she realised that it had been the curved dragon bones that had saved them. The very bones she had been hell-bent on removing as quickly as possible from the cavern beneath Midland Circle.

(The irony was not lost on her.)

Tearing the bedsheets into strips, she bandaged what she could, redressed his unresisting body in the softest clothing she could find in the enormous walk-in closet that would fit him: plain grey sweatpants, an equally anonymous thermal tee-shirt and black hoodie, and thick white socks. Exactly the kinds of clothes she had found in the chest of drawers in his bedroom. Exactly the sort of clothes he always wore in her dreams. When she remembered her dreams. When she dreamt of anything other than a cold, empty, vast _nothing_.

Curling herself around him, she slept in a stranger's bed, in a stranger's house, lulled by the vibrations of Matthew's heartbeat beneath her cheek.

She knew what she had to do.

* * *

Stick called her 'Ellie' but she never knew where he had found the name. By the time he'd found the pimp, she was just another half-white Cambodian child orphaned by the Vietnamese. She had no clear memories of her parents. She knew her father had been French, but could not picture his face, or the colour of his eyes. She couldn't remember the name her mother must have given her. No-one had called her by that name since their deaths.

Her life—her memories—really began when she had joined a small gang of children, forced camaraderie as they pooled their pitiful resources, in an effort to keep from losing anything they had to older, meaner fellow _enfants de la rue_. They spoke a creole of their own devising; a mix of Khmer, French, and crude English (mostly profanity).

One of the other children in the gang had called her _Naakrii._ It was a small, pale flower that only bloomed at night, that most considered little more than a weed. Like her. In the darkness, she could climb any wall, slip into any pantry or storeroom while the servants and other occupants of the fine houses slept. She never bothered trying to steal valuables. If she'd taken them to a fence, instead of giving her a handful of riels or kak, she'd have been caged and beaten into submission. She'd seen it happen to some of the other thieves. At seven, she could scale any wall like a monkey. At nine, she had knife scars and broken teeth, but was undisputed leader of their gang. Before her eleventh birthday, she was still small and slim enough to slip through gaps in garden walls, cheap bars on apartment windows. She had been Naakrii so long, it became a second skin.

But that first-second life had ended when her gang had been 'rescued' by foreign relief workers. They were turned over to one of the hundreds of unlicensed orphanages that had sprung up in every city of her country. They existed by taking money from stupid Americans looking for photogenic third world babies to show how philanthropic or Christian or rich they were. Most weren't orphans at all, but children from remote villages whose parents had sold them, thinking they would have a better life. Western medicine, Western education, a better future than they could give them.

Few children from the orphanage, as far as she knew, had ever been adopted. Most were put to work in sweatshops, while their keepers sold 'problem' children to slavers and brothels. Her problem was that she was too skinny, too old, and had injured too many guards.

Before Stick, she had been looking forward to a brief, brutal life in an illegal brothel. Before Stick, she had spent every second of every day trying to find some break in the walls imprisoning her that rose too high to climb, to get out. Get away. Get free.

While she had watched from the narrow door of her cell, Stick had butchered the tuktuk driver with broken teeth and foetid breath who had offered him an 'unspoiled virgin'.

She hadn't even flinched, as Stick had practically carved him in half, from neck to hip in a single, graceful arc, the polished and oiled blade catching the light from the single naked bulb overhead as it descended. Hot, red blood had spattered her face, and she had just taken the hand he'd offered and they had walked out of her prison.

When Stick did not rape her or beat her, she thought she had found a _home_. A family. Or at least the glimmer of the promise of the idea of something like belonging.

Instead, once she had enough English to understand, he told her about the War.

She had listened with rapt attention, swallowing the story whole. To her, it didn't seem like a fairytale. To her, it felt like the missing piece of the puzzle that let her truly see the world for the first time.

Stick told her had freed her because he knew what she was, and what she could be. The old (he was always old, even twenty years ago) blind man had looked into her and seen the rage and darkness that swelled like a tide, dragging her toward the bliss of violence that no-one else had ever _truly_ understood.

Nameless became Naakrii became Ellie. A warrior of the Chaste. The enemy of the Hand.

She grew taller, stronger, as for the first time she could remember she was given as much food as she could eat. Her hair was almost to the small of her back, her scars long healed by the time he took her to the temple. To show her off to the other students. By the time she was twelve, she could take down three men four times her size.

But the teachings of the Chaste, the endless craving of Stick's approval (but never his love. She did not know the difference. Not then.) had been the first collar she had ever placed around her own neck. The first leash that she had ever willingly embraced. The eternal fight against the Hand gave her purpose. Gave her a direction to channel all her fury, all her rage. Instead of letting it eat away at her like a cancer, she was allowed to let it loose upon the world.

To a point.

By the time she was twelve, she had killed a man and felt nothing but _joy_ as he'd bled out onto the packed dirt floor. A fierce, wild joy that she had never felt before. It had been like flying. It had felt like a kind of freedom she had always dreamt of, craved, needed like air in her lungs. She could not believe how she had lived without it for so long. How she had lived so long as a shade, a shadow, a dead thing.

She had truly felt alive for the first time in her life.

They threw her into a cell, and ordered her death. That night, even though Stick had told her that killing any member of the Chaste was wrong because they were on the same side, he had once again killed a man who had locked her in yet another cell.

Twice, he had killed for her. She silently swore to repay him in blood a hundred times over. Her devotion was utterly complete. He spirited her away while the other initiates and teachers slept. The men and women who had called her 'it' and wanted to see her put down like a rabid dog.

They went in a boat to France. No-one spoke to her, and she clung to Stick's hand like the simpering child she had never been. He went into a shop, bought them fine clothes. Took her to a small hotel in the Latin Quarter run by a frowning landlady, and they bathed and changed, and ate food so rich she was almost sick.

Wearing a pretty dress, all the tangles combed from her hair, he had taken her to a fine house, half-hidden behind tall wrought iron gates topped with spikes, and sold her to the Natchios family as surely as the tuktuk driver had sold her to Stick. He had dressed it up in fancy words. Promised her she was and would always be his Ellie. That he would never forget her.

But he still left her there, alone among strangers. Walked away while she stared after him, refusing to cry. To waste another molecule of salt on the man who had abandoned her.

* * *

Dawn was breaking across the city when she left a still worryingly unconscious Matthew, wrapped in a bloody bedspread, leaning against the heavy oak door of the convent.

She rang the bell until she could hear sounds from within. By the time the door opened, she was halfway up the fire escape to the roof of the building across the street. The long black wool coat she wore still smelled slightly of smoke (it would have been terribly inconvenient had the wealth of trace evidence they had left behind had found its way into the hands of the NYPD, let alone Homeland, so a gas main explosion had rocked the quiet tree-lined block just after she had disappeared down a side-street) and was too large on her. But it cut the chill as well as helped hide her from view.

She watched the flurry of activity from the rooftop, as the doors of the convent opened and Matthew was awkwardly carried inside by two older men in dog collars, their arms straining beneath his weight.

She didn't move. She just waited.

Eventually, a tall, thin woman had come back out, one hand over her mouth. She looked left, then right, scanning the street but finding it empty. She knew her in an instant, and sank back into the deep shadows cast by the chimneys of her refuge. Recognised her, despite the decade that had passed since she had last seen Sister Margaret Grace.

Matthew had never known his mother had taken holy orders, but Stick had. The old man had known since Matthew was a boy. Before she had even met Matthew at that ridiculous faculty party, she had been briefed on every detail of Matthew Murdock's life by the man who had trained them both.

She had spent days shadowing Sister Grace. Learning her routines, favourite coffee shop, which family-owned market she walked to, to pick up small bags of groceries to prepare simple meals for one. As she walked in Margaret Grace's footsteps, keeping her faded ginger hair always in sight, she was silently assessing her. Judging the woman who had walked away from her son as surely as Stick had walked away from her.

The former Mrs Murdock lived in a modest, almost Spartan room in a residence hall run by her order. She worked in a clinic, walking distance from St Agnes Children's Home. She could have passed her son on the street a hundred times, and never known it.

Sr Grace was a handsome woman, but not beautiful. Her hair was faded and streaked with grey, though she imagined it must have been bright as a new copper penny when Matthew was born. Her ears were pierced, but aside from a small gold crucifix, she wore no jewellery. Like most nuns, she wore neither wimple or habit, choosing instead modest, sensible clothing—cotton blouses and warm cardigans, skirts that fell below the knee when she wasn't wearing plain black trousers.

The nun's brown eyes were warm as she spoke to her patients in a voice that had the rasp of a former smoker. But she could see something of Matthew in the way she held herself, the economy and quickness of her movements. From behind the tattered months-old magazine in the waiting area, she watched and listened, and could find no fault with her actions now, no matter how much she judged her actions then.

She had slipped out of the clinic's dingy waiting room before the name she had given them was called, to meet Stick at one of the Chaste's many safe-houses in New York.

She had always been so good about following orders.

* * *

Elektra Natchios lived in a gilded cage.

At first, she lived the life of a pretty china doll, dressed in finery and brought out only to be admired by her parents and their associates, before being put back into her box. They never abused her, but they never truly knew her. And the one thing she knew deep down where she was still the nameless child weeping for parents she only remembered as a feeling, no-one could truly love someone without knowing them. They could trick themselves, lie to themselves, lie to others. But everything else was pretence. A show, put on for the sake of others.

She would never be her father's daughter. She would never know a mother's love. The Natchios family were actors. Props. Pawns, to hide her from the Chaste, who called her a thing and would spill her blood the first chance they got.

A parade of tutors made sure she excelled in all the school subjects she had never studied, living on the streets or being trained by the Chaste. She had dancing lessons, music lessons, fencing lessons, riding lessons. Every hour of every day was scheduled down to the minute.

She learnt French with a Parisian accent. She spoke fluent Greek, Italian, and Japanese. She wore the latest fashions, danced with all the right boys, had tea or chocolate with all the right girls. She was impeccable in tennis whites, or in breeches and hard hat, astride a prize Arabian in the ring. She took ribbons and medals in everything from dressage to mathematics to fencing.

She was the perfect daughter in every way. Meek when she needed to be. Poised and polished when she needed to be. Able to command the attention of an entire room, or to fade into the background like a piece of furniture. She was a chameleon, changing to suit her environment.

But a part of her was missing, and the gaping hole grew larger until the void threatened to consume her whole.

The summer she turned fifteen (or so her fake birth certificate claimed), she waited patiently outside her father's office in the Embassy, waiting until every minor functionary was gone for the day, and there were perhaps five or even ten minutes before he would pack his things to head back to their palatial home north of the city.

She sat, composed and almost prim in her school uniform, straight-backed in one of the decorative but not particularly comfortable chairs that were arranged in a line like soldiers, with only a view of his assistant's desk visible. Which was almost certainly the point.

Her father didn't even look up as she entered, and sat in a slightly more comfortable chair in front of his desk. In her hand was a carefully worded and immaculately typed proposal, which she laid on the centre of the blotter where he was forced to look at it.

"I don't have time right now—" Kostas began, moving to push the paper aside.

She pinned the paper to the blotter with one hand. "I've been scheduled for a fifteen minute conference," she said in perfectly accented Greek. "It's been on the books for weeks. You can check with Mme Rousseau."

He finally looked up at his adopted daughter and met her eyes, the corners of his mouth twitching as if he was attempting to hold back a fond smile at her antics.

"This is the current list of my extracurricular activities. I propose some alterations to my schedule."

She waited for him to interject, but he remained silent. Emboldened by his calm demeanour, she continued. "I will continue to pursue those activities that you believe are essential to my education and maintaining the façade of a cultured, sheltered diplomat's daughter. I will attend the Sorbonne, focussing on whichever programme you and mother believe would be most beneficial, be it Business, the Arts, Music. But in exchange, I ask that you consider the following additions to my education."

He picked up the list, eyes widening as he scanned the carefully prepared list. "Krav Maga? Capoeira? Muay Thai?"

"I only wish to continue to pursue my training," she said simply, without guile. Kostas may not have been a member of the Chaste, but he had known Stick. And moreover, Stick had trusted the Natchios family to hide her. They had to have known this day would someday come. It was only logical. "I will not enter any competitions, I will study one on one with instructors—most of whom are here in Paris—so as not to cause a scandal."

There was a long pause while Kostas looked over the list, as if reading it more than once would change the words. Finally, he set the list down, and tapped the blotter with the third finger of his right hand. She recognised it as an unconscious gesture that meant he was giving her proposal due consideration.

"You seem to have thought of everything," her father mused.

She just stared at him until, unnerved by her almost preternatural stillness, he leaned back in his chair and scratched the side of his head as if he was deep in thought, when in reality it just made him look like a stray dog in the street.

"I will take the matter up with your mother."

She smiled, knowing the matter was settled.

* * *

When she was eighteen, she came home to one of her family's many homes at dawn to find Stick sitting on the chair, staring blindly out at the Mediterranean.

"What are you doing here?" she'd hissed, unconsciously dropping into a fighting stance. He just laughed.

"You shoulda known I was here the second you got out of that fancy-ass car your boyfriend—no," he took a deep breath, "your _girlfriend_ was driving. Maybe you've gone soft, being a pampered little princess. You gone soft, Ellie?"

She'd responded by kicking off her high heels and ripping the slit in the skirt of her dress so she had complete freedom of movement.

"Shall I _show_ you just how soft I am, old man?"

He just laughed at her. It utterly enraged her, the sound of his whiskey-soaked, cigarette-roughened laugh that had once been the sweetest sound she'd ever heard.

The blood rushing in her ears, she lashed out. To her shame, he easily evaded her attacks, blocking every strike, evading every punch. He wasn't even breathing hard. Finally, he pinned her, her cheek resting against the cool marble tile of the patio.

"What I tell ya about rage, kid? You gotta learn to control it. Not let it control you. Out of control rage is useless."

He let her back up, and she shook off his hands as if his touch burned.

" _You_ were the one that charged me with this task—to learn how to wear different masks. To learn how to hide the honed weapon that _you made me_ in this civilised sheath. If you don't like it—"

"Just following orders, like a good little soldier?"

"You _left_ me."

"Yeah, I did." He lifted his chin a fraction. "You gonna cry about it? Or you ready to pick up where we left off?"

She could still feel the rage burning deep inside her, but a real fight—a chance to actually draw blood?

There was no choice for her to make. No choice at all.

* * *

She hated Manhattan. She hated the smug, superior attitudes of the people who lived there, convinced the crowded, filthy island with endless sacks of refuse lining its streets and trucks loading and unloading in the middle of the street, snarling even foot traffic at times, was some sort of cultural paradise.

All the glass and chrome couldn't hide the filth at ground level and beneath. All the Beaux-Arts architecture and grand museums and theatres couldn't mask the sour stench of pollution, human sweat, and rotting garbage that permeated the air, even the Upper East Side.

Since leaving the south of France with Stick, she had lived, killed, and fucked for the cause. She had revelled in both her purpose and her power. She quickly rose through the ranks, becoming one of the top warriors of the Chaste. So when she was summoned to a greasy diner in Hell's Kitchen, it had felt beneath her, and she said as much to the blind man she found waiting in a booth at the rear of the restaurant, an untouched mug of coffee going cold in front of him.

"The Hand's mobilising for… something. And whatever that something is, it ain't gonna be good. The Chaste needs warriors. I need you to bring this particular prodigal son back into the fold."

He handed her a file. She flipped through the pages, brows drawn together in confusion. "Matt Murdock?"

"Like you, Matty's one of the most naturally skilled fighters I've ever seen. Like you, I trained him to fight a war."

"So why isn't he here? On our side?"

"Because the kid's soft. Sure, he can fight. But I don't know if he has what it takes, to win this war."

"You mean you don't know if he will blindly kill on command?"

"Like I said. He's weak. But you're the strongest fighter I got. If anybody can bring the kid back around, it's you."

"Where do I start?"

* * *

Being ordered to seduce and then betray a man had never bothered her. She'd done far, far worse in the name of the Eternal War, and would do so again. Neither did the idea of tempting a man to betray his own closely held beliefs, deny his own truth down to the marrow of his bones. She thrived on challenges, and she did not believe there existed a man or woman who was truly incorruptible. It was never a question of it—only a question of _when_.

But it was the idea of a cat-and-mouse game with one of Stick's prized pupils that truly excited her. She looked forward to testing her training against his—perhaps even besting him, and proving to both herself and their mentor that Stick didn't need anyone else. That she would be enough. That she had _always_ been enough.

Still… Matthew had not been what she had been expecting. Oh, not his blindness, or his poorly-fitting suit. That much she had been prepared for. Even his keen sense of observation had all been part of the picture Stick had painted for her, when he'd given her the mission. He'd gone on and on about how weak the boy had been, how he'd been hobbled by his past, his faith, his misplaced sense of right and wrong in a world that didn't give two shits about either. But beneath all of the sour contempt, she still heard pride. She knew that Stick lied to himself when he said he didn't care; that the War was coming and their side needed as many soldiers as they could find.

But the world was full of soldiers—men and women hungry for belief and willing to turn themselves into weapons. The Chaste would never lack soldiers, not really. But true _fighters_ , now that was different. There were few in the Chaste who walked with death in their hearts, and were clear-eyed enough to see and fully comprehend that the loss of a few to save billions was insignificant in the centuries-long battle. All that mattered was that they win the War.

What surprised her about Matthew was the darkness—the violence in him that simmered so close to the surface. That called to her own bloodlust and fury. Yet unlike her, unlike Stick, he did not carry death in his heart. He had never once been truly tempted to give the beast its head, and welcome the carnage that would make him feel truly alive. The more time she spent with him, the more she wondered if he was weak for denying it, or if she was weak for so easily giving into her own darkness.

Then there was the sex.

She was no shy virgin, though she suspected that despite his wit and charm, Matthew had not had many partners before her. Not because of his performance which was, admittedly, untutored. After all, technique could be learnt. But that all-consuming flame of passion was pure. She could not help but be drawn in by his sheer _delight_ in losing himself in her. How utterly and completely he gave himself over to the sensual pleasures of the flesh. As if every kiss, every touch, every gasp and moan was unique and startlingly new and unexpected. He was present in the moment in a way that almost made her uncomfortable, all those extraordinary senses keenly focussed solely on her, as he read her body so easily, so perfectly.

She had been prepared to perform, but performance was impossible with Matthew. Not just because he could count the beats of her heart and know when she was playing false. But because he sparked in her something she had never felt before, which moved her to be honest with him—if not in all her actions, then in every moment the spent exploring one another's bodies, and glorying in all the different ways to give each other both pleasure and, when necessary, pain.

She was still drunk on him, caught in the whirlwind of her own unexpected reciprocation of his feelings, when she had left him asleep in her bed, to prowl the shadows of Hell's Kitchen in search of answers. Beginning with one Roscoe Sweeney.

* * *

She had walked away from Matthew that first time with every intention of never looking back. Stepped out the door of that hideous house, the air still thick with the scent of adrenaline and Roscoe Sweeney's blood.

The night had been so quiet. The second and last time she would ever set foot on Long Island, which to her had seemed a particularly horrible circle of hell. _Nouveau riche_ with their deplorable taste and boring lifestyles, which all seemed to revolve around being outcasts from the Hampton's in all but name. They spent their days shuttling back and forth from mediocre country club golf courses to mediocre offices in the city to their mediocre homes in an endless circle. Husbands leaving their trophy wives for their even younger secretaries. Bored wives fucking the gardeners and pool boys, getting nips and tucks from New York's second or third finest doctors. Living alone in the McMansions they won from their husbands in endless divorces, drinking themselves slowly to death over hands of cards and fundraiser planning sessions.

She had taken the car, not thinking or really caring how her Matthew would get back to Manhattan. When the bored Long Island police arrived, would he still be standing there, guarding the unconscious body of the man who had robbed him of the only family he had? Would he explain his presence there, spin some lie about having tracked down his father's killer? Take all of the blame onto his own shoulders? That sounded like her Matthew. Or perhaps he would forego being a martyr in favour of pretending he had never been there. Never split his knuckles against Sweeney's teeth. Return to his self-made prison. Cross those bridges and tunnels until he was safely ensconced in that pitiful dormitory room he shared with an idiot. Settled neatly back into the perfect calm of mediocrity and bland existence from which she had rescued him.

 _I am so tired_ , she thought with a rueful laugh. _Je suis très fatigué_. Matthew had asked her how to say that, in French, as she'd pulled up the long winding driveway.

She had met Stick at the rendezvous point, preparing herself to face his anger. For all the years they'd worked together—her the edge to his blade—she had never failed him. But it wasn't his anger that made her feel small and ashamed, but his _disappointment_.

Even when, as a child, she'd killed the man who tried to end her life, he had never once seemed to judge her so harshly, and find her so lacking. It stung like a blow to the chest. If she had been the type to cry, she might have, as he turned his back on her, and the blind man led her out of New York, and back to the never-ending war.

* * *

Being reborn in foetid, sour blood thickened with the powdered bones of ancient creatures she could not even begin to comprehend, had not actually been the most traumatic experience of her life. 

Perhaps because in that moment, there was no past to mourn, or future to guard. There had only been the present. That single moment in time. She had been very nearly the empty vessel Alexandra claimed. A vessel for the Hand to fill to the brim. Their longed-for Black Sky, a weapon foretold before empires rose and fell and were forgot. 

Alexandra called her the Black Sky, and that was, for a time, the mask she wore. But she could not live solely in the present. No-one could.

As the weeks turned into months, languages and memories came back to her like flashes of colours, triggered by the texture of a piece of fabric, or a half-remembered perfume, she had remained silent. Always watching, always listening. Her face remained a blank mask as she pretended not to understand the petty bickering of the Five Fingers of the Hand. She pretended to be Alexandra's automaton, her surrogate daughter, her greatest achievement. 

She had felt nothing as the famed order of the Crane Mother had fallen before her blades. As the Chaste had been slaughtered and burned in every bolt-hole in every corner of the known world. She had felt light, but not empty. Not because she believed in their ravings, but because killing brought her joy. Killing brought her peace. The simple execution of her sole purpose for existing quieted her mind and questioning soul almost completely. 

But in those hours between the deaths. In those days where Alexandra brushed her hair and laid out her clothes like she was the daughter she'd borne and lost, that was when all the fragments would begin to create the faintest outlines of images. Like dreams that vanished when she woke from a deep sleep, all she knew was that she was more than this. She was so much more than just the Black Sky. 

Their mistake had been sending her to fight Matthew at Midland Circle. Even as the blades of her _daishō_ whistled through the air above the stranger's head, she could feel the difference. Like a switch had been flipped. Like she was seeing in colour for the very first time.

She recognised him. The way he moved sparked fireworks behind her eyes. She breathed deep and was completely lost in the scent of his skin. 

Whomever she might have been, when she dove in front of Nobu Yoshioka's blade and felt the cold steel slice through sinew and bone, she was not her. Not any longer. The only thing Alexandra had truly been correct about was that the woman she had been had died, and was lost. 

But neither was she the Black Sky. 

As soon as she had taken the pair of sai from the wall, felt how they fitted so perfectly into her hands, she knew. From the first moment she had closed her eyes with her cheek pressed against Matthew Murdock's pillow and breathed him in, the pictures sharpened into moments, into truths. 

She had not known who she truly was, or who she might yet become. But with the clarity born of the death of Elektra Natchios and the rebirth of a once-again nameless orphan, she knew she would never be Alexandra's Black Sky. That thought had crystallised in the exact moment she had plunged the sai through the immortal's frail body, revelling in the spray of hot blood against her cheek. 

Alexandra had not known it, but she had signed her own death warrant the second she ordered the death of the Devil of Hell's Kitchen.

And she knew that there was only one chain left, binding her.

* * *

The last collar around her neck had been the hardest to break, because she herself had put it on and locked it in place.

Walking away from Matthew Murdock again, not knowing if he would truly live or die and knowing that was her fault… That was so much worse than she had ever thought it could be. Even as she'd thrown the blade that destroyed the mechanism of the cage that would have carried them both to the surface, and doomed them both to oblivion, she had still laughed. She had still gloried in the pure joy of the battle for dominance. Craved blood and death even while desiring immortality.

All he had ever done was love her, even when she could not love herself. Did not even know _how_ to love herself without him by her side. And for that, he lay bleeding and even dying among strangers, tended by the woman who had given birth to him and then abandoned him.

He deserved so much more. He deserved so much _better_. She had chosen death for them both; so it was her penance, then, to chose life. To choose life apart from him, so that he may be free from her corruption. Free from the pain she always, _always_ brought to the only man she had ever known who dared to try and love her for who she was, and not just who he thought she could or should be.

She chose freedom. For him. And for herself.

She had thought the air would taste different, when she finally, _finally_ was truly free. Her own woman, owned by and owing to no-one. Every last tie completely severed (some neatly; others spectacularly not).

For as far back as she could remember, someone has always held her leash. The men who had sold her. The Chaste. Alexandra. Stick. Even, in his own way, her beloved Matthew. But as she hunched her shoulders beneath the stolen coat against the wind, and walked away from the convent without once looking back, she had snapped that last binding. Not with a sword-thrust this time, but by walking away under her own power.

For as long as she could remember, she had never truly been free. And now, it seemed, she was free even from death.

(She had thought she would feel different. But there was still blood under her nails, and in the long strands of her hair, and she could no longer remember a time without the smell of it clinging to her.)

But when she breathed deep, all she could identify was cold tang of impending snow, and the stench of the city in the back of her throat. Almost exactly the same as the air she'd breathed from the roof of Matthew's apartment building, three days and a lifetime ago.

The air tasted no different. The sky had not fallen. The world still spun on its axis, completely unaffected by the profound change in the woman who had called herself Elektra Natchios, but was truly nameless, now.

She breathed in deep, forcing herself not to choke on the combined smells of people, rotting garbage, chemicals, and beneath it all, the scent of wet pavement rising from the rain-washed streets.

But she could pretend, just for a second, that she caught the scent of night-blooming jasmine.


End file.
